Legacy: Life Among the Ruins 2nd Edition

£62,258

1,713

The World Before is fallen, torn apart by an apocalypse so extreme that reality itself was shredded and warped in its wake.

Your ancestors survived thanks to a combination of luck, preparation and grit, and now the time has come to leave their shelters and start rebuilding the world.

You soon find the wasteland has other inhabitants: families with different perspectives on the world, secretive factions with the own agendas, and bizarre monsters stalking the wasteland.

As generations pass and your family makes sweeping changes to the world, what stories will you tell?

The first edition of Legacy: Life Among the Ruins was one of the first wave of Apocalypse World-inspired games, bringing a grander scale to the post-apocalyptic genre. Three years down the line, we're making a second edition that brings together all the great things from the first edition and makes the changes needed for the game to be the best it can be.

With your help, I hope to fund a beautiful print run of the game to end up in your hands and in shops worldwide. I also hope to fund some cool extras: Legacy-themed dice, upgrades to make the book even nicer, dry-erase playbook handouts, alternate takes on Legacy from other writers, and more!

Key Information:

Legacy's a game about what comes after the apocalypse. You'll explore a strange new world, find new ways to survive, and rebuild over generations. Think the grand scope of Civilisation, Birthright or Reign, matched with the post-apocalyptic stylings of Gamma World, Horizon: Zero Dawn or Hyper Light Drifter.

Each player controls a family of survivors. The group you control has weathered the chaos and come out the other side changed by the experience. Maybe they've found religion, like the Servants of the One True Faith? Maybe they held on to the technology of the World Before, like the Enclave of Forgotten Lore? Or perhaps they were never human but must live among them in the wasteland now, like the Stranded Starfarers?

Your family will be your constant as your group tells a century-spanning saga of exploration, conflict and evolution. When your family acts together, you trigger special moves that work through the consequences of conducting diplomacy, claiming a resource by force, using subterfuge or many other approaches.

Legacy is episodic. Each age of history, you focus on a particular character from your family. The character playbook you pick gives you a particular skillset and role within the family, but it also gives you a new perspective on the family: a diplomatic Envoy will present a very different side to the Tyrant Kings than a militaristic Sentinel.

A saga across generations. Once you're done telling the story of a particular age, you move the clock on. You go as far forward as the group likes: a decade, a generation, maybe even a century. Over the time skip your family can experience great fortunes or suffer trials, the world can change dramatically, and new threats and opportunities can emerge from the wasteland. Once you've set up your new age you make new characters, able to call on the powers of their ancestors.

If you'd like to take a closer look at the game, I've put together a quickstart. This document gives you a jumping-on point for Legacy, letting you try out the core game rules and pre-generated player options before breaking open the full suite of options available in the main book.

In Titanomachy, the players are survivors living among the ruins of a colony devastated when colossal titans surged out of the planet's jungle and tore apart their space elevator and advanced infrastructure. Generations down the line, the titan Gigas has just fallen after a monumental battle that devastated your families. Now you know the titans can be stopped, but your families are weaker than ever. How will you build a world where you're safe?

Putting the map centre stage. Your choices in making your family say a lot about the sort of world you live in, and you can use the data your family gains to add new resources and features to the map.

Character roles. Each character will fit somewhere in the family's hierarchy - as a Leader, an Agent, a Rebel or an Outsider. Your choice of role affects your relationship with your family and lets you declare facts about your current mission, the state of your family, or the wider world. By changing roles you learn more, unlocking new moves or advancing your stats.

Updated Basic Moves. The core rules of Legacy have been tightened up to be clearer and better drive play. Where it makes sense they've been merged or rewritten, to cut down the amount players have to remember during play. Gear has been made more dependent on the family's resources: as the family grows richer, you'll have more tools to use.

Quick Characters. These simpler playbooks let you build a character for a scene or to round out an expedition so that you're never left out of the story. Each family has their own Quick Character playbook, letting other players jump in to show a new side of your family.

Every Playbook updated. Each playbook published over the first edition of Legacy is in here, all rewritten and updated to fit the new system.

All backers get access to the current draft of the book, with a basic layout.

Check the stretch goals for upgrades we're hoping to make over the course of the campaign!

Legacy: Life Among the Ruins Second Edition is planned as a full-colour hardback book. It's US Royal Sized (156mm x 234 mm) with a sewn spine and a ribbon bookmark. It weighs in at about 300 pages, and it's packed with gorgeous art.

Hardcover mockup

Hardcover mockup 2

Deluxe Edition

Deluxe Edition mockup

The deluxe edition of Legacy is bound in faux leather and embossed in gold with the game's logo and its name on the spine, and comes in a full-colour, durable slipcase.

Backers at the Elder, Loremaster and Shiny and Chrome levels can raise their pledge by £10 to upgrade to the Deluxe edition.

Backers at the Architect, Survivor, Tyrant,Titan and Apocalypse Incarnate levels are upgraded to the Deluxe edition for free.

Shipping

International shipping can be a real headache, especially for smaller publishers. To help mitigate some of that, I'm not charging shipping fees now but instead will charge them after the campaign using Pledge Manager when I'm ready to ship and know exactly how much it'll cost.

YOU DON'T NEED TO ADD ANYTHING TO YOUR PLEDGE NOW.

For estimates of what it's likely to cost after the campaign, see this diagram:

I'll keep you updated as shipping cost estimates change based on the scale of the eventual fulfilment effort.

Coupon Code

Backers at the £15 level get a coupon they can use to get £10/$13 off the book once it's released, bringing the cost down from its £30 RRP to £20/$26+shipping. This will get you the same book as everyone who backs this campaign at the Elder tier and up, bought from the Modiphius webstore.

I'm James Iles, lead designer on Legacy and head of UFO Press. I've been designing and publishing role-playing games, board games and LARPS for pretty much all my adult life, and really enjoy making storytelling games that people from all backgrounds can enjoy. Lending invaluable support is my wife Liz Iles, my co-designer on What Ho, World! and Wizards Aren't Gentlemen.

I'm joined on this project by Douglas Santana Mota. Douglas' passion for Legacy lead to him emailing me out of the blue with a pitch that eventually turned into Legacy: Mirrors in the Ruins. Since then he's been a constant source of inspiration and sounding board for ideas, and I'm very glad to have him on board for this second edition.

The book will be edited by Rebecca Curran, who comes with glowing reviews from other writers.

Art is by Tithi Luadthong and Jeff Brown. Tithi's painterly, impressionistic style perfectly gets across the weird and techno-magical feel I wanted for Legacy, and Jeff's landscapes are awe-inspiring.

I'm getting help with shipping and subsequent distribution to shops from the folks at Modiphius. They have a lot of experience shipping crowdfunding projects all across the world, and I'm confident their help will make this project a success.

We've been recording a playtest campaign - if you'd like to get a sense of how Legacy feels in play, check it out!

Generation Ship from Aaron Griffin has your families waking up half way through a thousand year journey. Now you need to find a way to live on a ship that wasn't intended to support long-term habitation, keep it running, and try to make sure future generations reach the promised land at the end of your journey.

If we hit this level, every book will be upgraded to hardcover, complete with ribbon bookmark!

Free From the Yoke by Fyodor Kasatkin is a fantasy hack of Legacy inspired by the Medieval Rus, with a dash of Game of Thrones. An occupying force has recently withdrawn from the Homeland causing a power vacuum, with one family - the Arbiter - holding the lion's share of authority. This hack brings inter-house intrigue, ancient magic, and new lands waiting to be explored outside your borders.

Book mockup

If we hit £16,000, every backer at the Elder tier and up will have the option of raising their pledge by £10 to get the deluxe edition of Legacy 2nd Edtion. This version is bound in faux leather, gold foil-stamped and presented in a durable, full-colour slipcase.

In Primal Pathways by Laurence Phillips, players are guardian spirits, each pushing a clade of species down a different path. You start with the beginnings of complex multicellular life and gradually evolve your chosen species to the heights of civilisation. As you explore and reshape your ecosystem you'll compete with the other guardian spirits for resources and advantageous traits, claiming them as yours to adapt your species to better exploit niches in the environment.

At £22,000 the folks at Tabletop Audio will make three ambient looping tracks you can play in the background of your sessions to set the scene. There'll be one for each of the modes of play: Ruins will express a feeling of empty cities, howling winds, and crumbling buildings, Echoes will suggest ancient technology and weird hypertech, and Mirrors will give you hints of swarms of mutated and alien creatures lurking just out of sight!

At £24,000 we'll make lists of weird devices to find in the wasteland, settlements your characters can encounter, and strange hazards that can menace them. Roll randomly to get some inspiration, pick and choose whatever takes your fancy, or use them as a jumping-off point to build your own ideas.

If we hit £25,000 we'll unlock the print version of Generation Ship. You'll be able to raise your pledge to get a physical softcover copy of Aaron's sci-fi hack of Legacy, printed at the same time as the main Legacy print run.

This is a big one: at £28,000 I'll commission 10 more pieces of art from Tithi Luadthong. You'll be able to raise your pledge to get an artbook of Tithi's work, printed on high-quality art paper!

If we hit £30,000 we'll unlock the print version of Free From the Yoke. You'll be able to raise your pledge to get a physical softcover copy of Fyodor's fantasy hack of Legacy, printed at the same time as the main Legacy print run.

At £31,000 we're upgrading the core book - both standard and deluxe editions. The book will now have full-colour printed endpapers and a second ribbon bookmark.

At £32,000 we'll print Laurence's bio-punk evolutionary alternate setting in softcover. As we'll have three settings in print at this point, we'll also add a bundle deal - get all softcover settings together as individual books in a printed slipcase, for a discount!

At £34,000 we'll make our forth alternate setting. In Godsend by Khelren each player controls the avatar of a particular god, working to bring about or subvert prophecies of the end times in a world inspired by ancient Greek and Norse mythology. In a major change from the other settings your 'family playbook' analogue - your god - is controlled by another player, adding in an element of bargaining with your god for access to powerful miracles.

This book will be unlocked in print when we hit the stretch goal, letting you pledge to have your own copy printed in softcover.

At £36,000 we'll make our first supplement for the core game of Legacy!

The Engine of Life is a book about hope and solace. New Wonders and Artifacts to ease the suffering of your people and bring prosperity to the land. A new Family, The Architects of Tomorrow, can reshape the Homeland and unite its people in order to avoid Mankind past mistakes. Several new Factions and Locations to lend a helping hand or provide a safe haven for those brave enough to simply trust. On the personal level we unlock The Saint, a noble descendant of first responders, fighting for life itself. Finally, we add the Savior Role, to bring this book's elements to the forefront of your ongoing campaign through your current Characters.

At £38,000 you'll be able to get custom laser-engraved acrylic tokens to track the Treaty you owe to other Families and the favours other families owe to you. A set will contain 50 tokens - 10 each of 5 different colours/patterns, each token an 18mm diameter disk. Here's a production sample:

At £40,000 we'll increase our art budget for the Alternate Settings, making sure each has a distinct look that's perfect for its themes.

At £42,500 I'll be joining the alternate setting authors! Rhapsody of Blood is inspired by Castlevania, Bloodborne and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Once every generation, a castle filled with blood and magic and monsters intrudes on the mortal world. Certain bloodlines are able to sense its arrival and arrive from all over the world to explore the castle's depths. Each bloodline's there for their own reasons: to search for magical artefacts, to protect the world from the monsters swarming out of it, or to defeat its dark regent and seize control of the realm for a generation. If someone defeats the regent they get to say how mortal society changes over the next generation and how their bloodline prospers. If the Regent's able to bring their dark ritual to completion, however, great ruin falls on the bloodlines and the mortal world.

At £45,000 Douglas will write a second supplement for Legacy. End Game is book about doom and entropy. Threats, Dangers and Fronts that might well finish off what the Fall started. Factions that embrace the world as it is, resisting and defying any change and unity. Two new Roles, The Prophet and the Judas, that let you come full circle on your Characters' stories and open the doors to some serious plots twists for your grand finale. Two new Families, The Bleak Lords and The Refugees of Tomorrow, that know what the End of All Things truly means and stand ready to conquer it or avoid it at all costs. Closing the curtains, we give The Mindbender, a dark psionic reflection to the Remnant.

If we hit £47,500 I'll upgrade the quality of the dice set and handout sheets. First up, the dice will now come in a presentation box, looking nice on your shelves (or on store shelves). In addition, I'll upgrade the card stock the handout sheets will be printed on, and ship them to you in their own tuckbox for each of transport and storage - on top of adding all backer-created families, characters, and Quick Character cards for those families into the set.

If we hit £50,000 I'll commit to a traditional print run for The Engine of Life and End Game, ensuring you'll get them in a level of quality that matches that of the core set and we can get the supplements into game stores. Once they're written, you'll have the chance to pre-order the book set for a cheaper backer-exclusive price.

(Otherwise, we're likely to use DriveThruRPG's Print on Demand to print these books.)

That's us done! Any further funding will be used at our discretion to upgrade the books, increase the size of the print run, or give our authors a raise.

Pledging isn't the only way you can help this project grow. Help spread the word and we'll unlock all sorts of extras - wallpapers, an interactive character builder, and postcards and posters included with every book!

Add ons in detail:

After the Kickstarter, I'll send out a survey where you can let me know exactly what add ons you want.

All Alternate Settings in a box set - £30/$40

Get every alternate setting in a single box set, presented in the same kind of durable slipcase as the Deluxe edition of Legacy comes in.

Generation Ship in Softback - £10/$13

Softcover mockup

Get Aaron Griffin's sci-fi hack of Legacy in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.

Free From the Yoke in Softback - £10/$13

Softcover mockup

Get Fyodor Kasatkin's low-fantasy medieval Rus-themed hack of Legacy in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.

Primal Pathways in softback - £10/$13

Get Laurence Phillip's bio-punk evolutionary fantasy hack of Legacy in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.

Godsend in softback - £10/$13

Get Khelren (aka Tiburce Guyard)'s end-of-days hack of gods and avatars in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.

Rhapsody of Blood in softback - £10/$13

Get James Iles' gothic action horror hack in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.

The Art of Legacy - £15/$19.50

A 50-page full-colour coffee table-sized book showcasing Legacy's beautiful art, along with notes on the feeling a particular piece of art was meant to evoke or the process we went through creating it.

Dice Set - £11/$14

These great custom-engraved dice will be manufactured by the awesome people at Q Workshop. They come in a pack of 6 - enough for three players if you're ok with sharing! These will be sent separately to save on customs duties.

Set of 50 Treaty Tokens - £12/$15

As we've passed 38k you've unlocked Treaty Tokens. These acrylic tokens - laser-engraved by the folks at Litko - are perfect for tracking the Treaty points you've handed out and collected from others, though you could also use them to track Tech points, Data points or anything else you'd like!

A set of tokens is 50 tokens, 10 each in 5 different styles. Each token is a circular disk, 18mm across.

Handout Sheets - £15/$19.5

Printed on card by the good folks at DriveThruCards, this pack contains every playbook (family and character), basic move reference sheets, and quick character cards that make rapidly creating an incidental character a breeze. The card finish lets you use dry-erase markers to fill them in, letting you reuse the cards as many times as you like.

Poster - £10/$13

A large (594 x 841 mm) poster featuring Tithi Luadthong’s amazing cover art. Note that this will be folded down to be shipped with the book.

Add £6 to your pledge to have this poster (and all other posters unlocked) shipped seperately rolled up in a poster tube.

Extra Book - £25/$33

An additional hard copy of the second edition of Legacy. This is the same hardcover edition as you get when you pledge at the Elder level.

Risks and challenges

I've got the game as close to complete as I can before asking you for funding. The preview version you get as soon as you back for £8 or more is perfectly functional, with art, a basic layout, and playtesting already done.
I've already managed and delivered two successful kickstarters, and have experience handling pitfalls with freelancer management, project management, international shipping and fulfilment. The book printer and fulfilment houses I'm using - SKN Printing and Publishing for the books, and Gamequest for fulfilment - come well recommended from other indie game makers, and I've already discussed with them my expectations for the project. If I run into any unexpected problems, I'll have the seasoned Kickstarter operators at Modiphius to turn to for advice.

It's certain that things will crop up I haven't predicted, but you can trust that I will always be open with you about the state of the project and any hurdles I've run into. Clear and honest communication with my backers is my #1 priority!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £15 or more
About $20

Scholar

Approx. $19.
Get immediate access to the current draft PDF, credit in the book, a PDF copy when the game's complete, and all additional PDF content unlocked over the course of this campaign. In addition, you'll get a code you can use once the game's out to get £10 off a physical copy.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £30 or more
About $39

Elder

Approx. $39.
Get the physical book of Legacy 2. You'll also get immediate access to the current draft PDF, a PDF copy when the game's complete, a credit in the book, and all additional PDF content unlocked over the course of this campaign.
SEE CAMPAIGN TEXT FOR INFORMATION ON SHIPPING COSTS.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £40 or more
About $52

Loremaster

Approx. $51.
Get a signed copy of Legacy 2 and a set of 6 Legacy-themed D6s. You'll also get immediate access to the current draft PDF, a PDF copy when the game's complete, a credit in the book, and all additional PDF content unlocked over the course of this campaign.
SEE CAMPAIGN TEXT FOR INFORMATION ON SHIPPING COSTS.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £75 or more
About $98

Shiny and Chrome

Approx. $97.
I'll sign your book and write in it a custom tech device just for you!
In addition, get the game in PDF, stretch goal PDFs, the playbooks and quick character cards printed out on dry-erasable sheets, the poster, and 6 Legacy-themed D6s produced by Q Workshop.
SEE CAMPAIGN TEXT FOR INFORMATION ON SHIPPING COSTS.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £120 or more
About $156

Survivor

Approx. $155.
I'll work with you to create a new Character playbook, to be released to all backers at the Scholar level and up.
In addition, get a signed copy of the book, the game PDF, stretch goal PDFs, the playbooks and quick character cards printed out on dry-erasable sheets, and 6 Legacy-themed D6s produced by Q Workshop.
SEE CAMPAIGN TEXT FOR INFORMATION ON SHIPPING COSTS.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £120 or more
About $156

Tyrant

Approx. $155.
I'll work with you to create a new Family playbook, to be released to all backers at the Scholar level and up.
In addition, get a signed copy of the book, the game PDF, stretch goal PDFs, the playbooks and quick character cards printed out on dry-erasable sheets, and 6 Legacy-themed D6s produced by Q Workshop.
SEE CAMPAIGN TEXT FOR INFORMATION ON SHIPPING COSTS.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £120 or more
About $156

Architect

Approx. $155.
I'll work with you to create a new homeland-redefining Wonder, to be released to all backers at the Scholar level and up.
In addition, get a signed copy of the book, the game PDF, stretch goal PDFs, the playbooks and quick character cards printed out on dry-erasable sheets, and 6 Legacy-themed D6s produced by Q Workshop.
SEE CAMPAIGN TEXT FOR INFORMATION ON SHIPPING COSTS.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £240 or more
About $312

Titan

Approx. $310
As Survivor or Tyrant, but we'll also work with Tithi Luadthong to make art for your playbook according to your wishes.
Plus get a signed copy of the book, the game PDF, stretch goal PDFs, the poster, the playbooks and quick character cards printed out on dry-erasable sheets, and 6 Legacy-themed D6s produced by Q Workshop.
SEE CAMPAIGN TEXT FOR INFORMATION ON SHIPPING COSTS.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £400 or more
About $521

Apocalypse Incarnate

Want to make your own apocalypse? If you back at this level, you can tell us the details - what the world was like, how it went wrong, what it looks like now. Then we'll put together a short, full-colour and full-art book (along the same lines as the Titanomachy Quickstart) that lets people jump into a game in your world, with a few custom moves to suit.
Oh, and you'll also get a signed deluxe edition of the book, the PDF, all stretch goals in PDF, the poster, the dry-erase handouts, and 6 Legacy-themed D6s.